Co-foundER And Co-ownER of TswEloPElE PRoduCTions And …zebra.bookslive.co.za/files/2009/03/my-success-extract.pdf · Co-foundER And Co-ownER of TswEloPElE PRoduCTions And HEAd of

CHAPTER 3veteran ENTREPRENEURS

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Basetsana Kumalo,Co-foundER And Co-ownER of TswEloPElE PRoduCTions And HEAd of THE BusinEsswomEn’s AssoCiATion

Brains and beautyMost people know her as Miss South Africa 1994, but Basetsana (Bassie) Kumalo is not

at all the beauty queen type. Although undeniably gorgeous, at just thirty-four this

woman has run her own television business (Tswelopele Productions) for fourteen

years, has her own line of cosmetics, is head of the largest networking body for women

in business in the country, and has just launched the first black, woman-owned coal-

mining company in South Africa in partnership with Sekoko Resources. It’s more

than some people achieve in a lifetime, and rather puts the achievement of winning

Miss South Africa in its place.

‘Being Miss South Africa was not my lifelong dream,’ she says dryly. In fact, her

mother entered her into the competition while she was studying to be a teacher at the

University of Venda in the early 1990s, and she went ahead with it because her mother

was ‘not the kind of person you said no to’! Her word was final. ‘I was never really into

beauty pageants,’ adds Bassie. ‘I was on the SRC, chairperson of the central cultural

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MY SUCCESS, YOUR SUCCESS

committee and getting involved in politics on campus. The next thing I knew I got a

call saying I had made it to the semi-finals of Miss South Africa!’

Once she attained the honour of the title, however, Bassie says it has not been

without its advantages. ‘This whole Miss South Africa thing has its pros and cons,’

she says. ‘On the one hand, I’ve had to carry around the beauty queen stigma – the

stereotype that beauty queens don’t have much between the ears. Over the last fifteen

years of my working career I have had to prepare that much more and work that much

harder to prove myself. On the other hand, it has been undeniably useful in opening

doors. Having been given the opportunity, I used it wisely to catapult myself to an-

other level. People are often curious to meet you, and that’s often enough to get you

an appointment. But, of course, it’s what you do with that appointment that counts.’

Bassie proved this last point when, early in 1995, she and business partner Patience

Stevens hit on the idea of setting up Tswelopele Productions – one of the first and most

successful independent television production companies in South Africa.

Bassie met Patience a few months after she became Miss South Africa, when Patience

was filming a pilot show on fitness for the SABC. ‘As Miss South Africa, you are inter-

viewed by all sorts of people here and there and invited into lots of forums,’ says Bassie.

Appearing on the fitness programme was one of them.

Immediately struck by Bassie’s camera presence, Patience invited her to become a

presenter on a new magazine show called Top Billing, which she had conceptualised

and was producing on behalf of the SABC. Not knowing much about anything then,

Bassie thought it sounded interesting, and agreed. And thus, as easy as that did she

‘transition into the crazy world of TV’. She began her glamorous career (just one of

many, of course) as a TV presenter on one of the country’s most enduringly popular

TV shows. The show has been running for fifteen years and is the longest-running

lifestyle magazine show on South African television.

The novelty, however, wore off fast. ‘I am the kind of person who gets bored very,

very quickly,’ says Bassie. ‘And regurgitating somebody else’s words week after week

was not very interesting. After three to four months, I was well and truly bored.’

Thinking that there had to be more to television, Bassie went to speak to Patience.

She wanted to learn more about the business of TV, how it worked behind the scenes.

In those days, the SABC produced all of its own material internally. Essentially,

Bassie learnt, they made big profits from somebody else’s brainchild – in the case of

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veteran ENTREPRENEURS

Top Billing, Patience’s brainchild. With the clarity of youth, Bassie thought that the

whole thing was a bit unfair, and she and Patience decided to join forces to do something

about it. Specifically, they decided to negotiate with the SABC to produce Top Billing

independently and to take back what was rightfully Patience’s to start with. It had

always been a long-term goal of Bassie’s to run her own business; it just looked like

the plan was about to be moved forward a bit.

Bassie approached the SABC and exerted the Miss South Africa charm to secure

that all-important interview with then CEO Zwelake Sisulu. That was the easy bit.

Actually turning up at the interview to talk business was the part that she was not so

confident about. In fact, she says, it was the most frightening thing she had done to

date – and this from someone who had represented South Africa on the global stage

at the Miss World contest in 1994. (She came second, by the way.)

‘My heart was beating!’ says Bassie. ‘I didn’t have any fancy business-speak or

business know-how. But I just told him our idea and asked him if he would be prepared

to give us the opportunity. I threw in the empowerment word – which was something

of a new buzzword in those days – and told him how important it was for us as

women to be given an opportunity like this.’

When she had finished, she says that Sisulu just sat and looked at her, dead quiet.

Eventually he said, ‘My child, the future of this country looks bright if young people

like you can do what you have just done.’ Clearly she had made an impression.

It took eight months – the decision first had to be ratified by the SABC board

– but at last the day dawned when Tswelopele (which means, appropriately enough,

‘progress’ in Tswana) was born. The SABC had effectively changed the way it operated

to bring this about, and Bassie and Patience were at the vanguard of a whole new era

for television. They were one of the first to get a contract to produce a programme for

the SABC, opening the door to the thriving industry of today.

Of course, the real work only started after this happy day. The proud owners of

Tswelopele Productions, they now actually had to produce an entire television

programme – lots of them – without a studio, without premises and without the infra-

structure of the SABC. Money clearly was the most pressing concern; they urgently

needed to buy equipment.

They approached the banks, but soon found that with no collateral and no track

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record, no financial institution was willing to even look at them. Having come so far,

however, they were not about to let a little thing like money get in their way.

‘If you have a vision and a dream, I believe that you cannot let anyone stand in

your way,’ says Bassie. ‘We had to understand that the banks did not share our passion

and they didn’t really understand the industry, so it was hard for them to see where

the returns lay. It was up to us to make them see that. But first, we had to find money

somewhere as a good show of faith. All of a sudden we had to go and look under the

mattress to see how much money our parents had saved so we could buy what we

needed to function as a company.’

In the end they scraped together a decent amount. Bassie borrowed some from her

parents and put down her winnings from Miss South Africa, while Patience put in

some of her own money. With this, they went back to the banks with a business plan

that explained exactly why it was important that they loan them the rest of the money.

‘It was important for the banks to see our commitment,’ says Bassie. Fortunately,

they were convincing, and they got what they needed to start production.

It was hard work. In addition to presenting the show – which she continued to do for

the next nine years until the birth of her son in 2005 – Bassie handled all the marketing

and internal human resources issues involved in setting up and running Tswelopele.

Meantime, Patience, the technical guru, got on with doing what she does best – making

great TV.

Bassie had no previous experience of business, so she had to learn as she went

along. At just twenty-one years of age, it was a far cry from what other girls in her peer

group were up to. ‘I grew up very fast,’ she says. ‘I didn’t spend my twenties clubbing

and partying like a lot of other girls did.’

She can, however, rest in the knowledge that it was not a misspent youth! As every-

body knows, the Patience-Bassie combination is a great one. Over the years, Tswelopele

has flourished. It now employs 130 people and produces, in addition to its flagship

Top Billing, Pasella and SABC 1’s youth show Ses’khona. Four years ago Patience and

Bassie also decided to diversify into publishing, and now produce a monthly glossy

Top Billing magazine, which successfully translates the brand from television to print,

as well as a series of Pasella cookbooks.

Bassie says it is all as a result of daring to dream and holding fast to that dream, as

she and Patience did. She believes that this ability to dream, together with passion and

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dedication, are essential ingredients in the make-up of any entrepreneur. Whether these

characteristics are inherent or made is another question. Personally, she thinks she was

given this gift by her parents.

Born in Soweto in 1974, one of four children, Bassie comes from a family (and a

community) with a strong Christian ethos and an entrepreneurial mindset. Given the

historical context, times were difficult, and from early on she learnt the value of hard

work. Although her father was a bus driver and her mother a teacher, it didn’t stop

either of them from engaging in a host of activities on the side to generate income.

‘There’s nothing that my parents didn’t try,’ says Bassie, ‘from making curtains to

sell in Lesotho to starting a construction company. They did it all.’

Maybe not so surprising, then, that from a young age Bassie, too, was out there

working. From selling sweets in the playground at school to selling hard-boiled eggs

in the neighbourhood or ice creams at the soccer stadium, she and her sisters were

kept busy. ‘One learnt to work with money at an early age. I didn’t realise it at the time,

but this was a form of education,’ she says.

In addition, her wise mother, believing that idle time is a dangerous thing to a

young mind, found activities to keep her three girls from straying into harm’s way.

From church choir and Sunday School to beauty pageants and youth clubs, she made

sure that they were kept busy. This is how Bassie came to win Miss Helio (a local shoe

shop) when she was barely out of childhood, and, in 1990, at age sixteen, was crowned

Miss Soweto, then swiftly after that, Miss Black South Africa. It’s easier to understand

now why her mother couldn’t resist the grand prize of Miss South Africa itself.

All of this, Bassie says, was carried out against a backdrop of tremendous love and

support, which gave her and her siblings all the confidence they needed to succeed in

life. ‘Although we didn’t have a lot of material things, one thing we always had in our

home was love. We knew that we mattered and, from a young age, we were allowed to

have a voice,’ she says. ‘I could look back and say, “Oh, I had it hard,” but actually I

didn’t. I had all the love and support and the best informal training in my own home

with my own parents. They taught us how to stand up and survive in this world.’

Nobody could have asked for more, and it is something that Bassie seeks to pass

on to her own son. Although she feels constantly guilty for being a working mom, she

reminds herself from time to time that she is the product of working parents – and

she didn’t turn out too badly!

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‘I may not know all the cartoon characters and nursery rhymes, but I make sure

that my son knows that I love him,’ she says. ‘I may not be able to tuck him in every

night, but I am instilling in him a sense of the value of hard work.’

It’s all been quite a journey, Bassie admits. Along the way she has relied on the

support of her family and husband – ‘the wind beneath my wings’ – and has also

drawn considerable support from her Maker. ‘I honestly believe I am where I am in

life today because of God’s grace,’ she says.

After fourteen years with Tswelopele, she no longer needs to be as hands-on as

she used to be. The company practically runs itself these days, although she still

plays a role in securing new deals. In addition to her other side interests – Bassie

is the ambassador for Milady’s clothing and Cadillac Motors, and has her own cos-

metics, sunglasses and optical ranges – she now finds herself in the enviable position

of ‘diversifying even further’. Although she has had ‘diamond-mining interests’ for

the past few years, she recently became operationally involved in a coal-mining business

owned by herself and two other women partners. Called Uzalile Investments (Pty) Ltd,

the company has a joint venture with Sekoko Resources that seeks to make them a

global player in the coal-to-liquid (CTL) and energy markets. In 2008, the two

companies listed in Australia (jointly with Australian company Firestone Energy),

and in South Africa on the JSE.

‘Mining is something I am really getting my teeth into right now. I am learning

everything I can about it through attending workshops, seminars and courses through

Wits University,’ says Bassie, adding that it’s vital to do your homework before getting

involved in a business, otherwise you run the risk of being blind-sided.

‘It is something I am particularly excited about. Because we are a resources-based

economy, investing in this industry has the potential to empower people and create

jobs for thousands of South Africans. Our projects with Uzalile and Sekoko employ

workers to the tune of 11 000 people.’

When it comes to empowering people, Bassie is also getting more and more ab-

sorbed in her role as president of the Businesswomen’s Association, an unsalaried

position that she assumed in 2007. This is one of her ways of giving back to her

country and making a difference in the lives of women. As it is South Africa’s largest

networking body for women, Bassie is passionate about the role it can play in building

and empowering women in this country. ‘We run a host of projects, workshops,

seminars, power lunches, achiever awards and mentorship programmes,’ she says.

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‘When you are an entrepreneur, you have a responsibility to look after a greater

whole,’ she says. ‘This is not always easy – in fact, it’s very idealistic – but it’s imperative.

Each company needs to do something that matters to somebody’s life.’

Bassie maintains that without others playing this kind of a role in her life, she would

not be where she is today. ‘I am a product of mentorship. Patience mentored me at

Tswelopele, and I was mentored by my mother in my home. In the mining sector I am

being mentored by Tim Tebeila (the owner of Sekoko Resources),’ she says. ‘If you

think about it, we are all the products of mentorship.’

Bassie in her turn now personally mentors ten young women, which doesn’t mean

that she thinks she has ‘arrived’ in any sense. She believes that everyone is on a continual

journey and that the future still has much in store for her. And if her first thirty-four

years are anything to go by, she is not wrong in this regard.

‘I am still a work in progress,’ she says. ‘If I wake up someday and think I have

arrived, that will be a sad day. It will be the day I stop growing, the day I stop striving to

be a better person, and the day I lose that all-important va-va-voom for life!’ she says.

Bassie’s ToP TiPs foR suCCEss

Never let people’s perceptions of who you are determine your destiny or define 1.

who you are. Some people wanted to use my Miss South Africa title against me

and I could have decided it was too difficult to break through that, but I did not

let it deter me. Make people see your true value.

Be fearless – what have you got to lose? If you don’t give it a shot, you will regret 2.

it and you don’t want to live a life of regret. As Richard Branson says, ‘Screw it,

just do it.’

Surround yourself with wise, fabulous and informed people who know more 3.

than you. My mother always used to say that you are a product of the people

you spend time with. I am a product of mentoring. Be willing to admit that

you don’t know it all, and then open yourself to the wisdom of others and learn

from them.

Pursue your passions; this will help ensure your success. All my business interests 4.

reflect the things I am passionate about. For example, my cosmetics, sunglasses

and clothing businesses reflect the fact that I’m a girl at heart and love to look

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good, and I want to help other women achieve the same thing – without breaking

the bank. Knowing what you want and what you are passionate about is a key

part of personal success.

Write down your goals so you have something to shoot for. I always had a desire 5.

to be successful and not to lack for anything. After winning Miss South Africa, I

sat down and wrote down my short-, medium- and long-term goals. They were:

to get a licence (I’d won a car as part of Miss South Africa but couldn’t drive),

to travel the world and to start my own business. At the time I didn’t know how,

and they were very grandiose ideas, but I have worked hard to try to achieve

them – though I believe the best is yet to come.

Live your life with honesty and integrity, and do not conform. When the curtain 6.

draws on my life, I want to be able to say, good or bad, right or wrong, I did it

my way.

Be courageous and determined. An entrepreneur is not just somebody who has 7.

a great idea, it is somebody who has a great idea and is not afraid to turn that

idea into a reality. It will be tough and you must not be afraid of failing; know

that you can only learn from failure. Remember, also, when you are an entrepre-

neur, you are not out to win a popularity competition. You are there to live a

dream, to do the job and to make a difference in people’s lives.

Don’t be afraid of hard work. My father always used to say, ‘If you can conceive 8.

it, you can achieve it, and hard work, baby girl, has never killed anybody!’ He

was right.

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Carrol Boyes,foundER And CEo of CARRol BoyEs funCTionAl ART

The story of a South African icon

It’s a fact. No South African wedding is complete without at least one Carrol Boyes gift.

People just can’t seem to get enough of these magnificent metal objects that range

from salad servers to beautifully crafted tables, and which are a unique fusion of style,

durability and functionality – with a little bit of fun thrown in.

The Carrol Boyes brand is going strong, and it’s all thanks to the fact that twenty

years ago, Carrol, the name behind the brand, decided to take a risk and leave the safety

of her teaching job to do what she loved.

‘When I started out, I wanted to follow my dream,’ she says. ‘I didn’t plan how it

has turned out; I just wanted to put bread on the table and wake up in the morning

and be creative.’

A trained sculptor, Carrol says that from the age of ten she has had a fascination

with art, more particularly with how artists bring images and people to life.

‘As I grew up, the intrigue continued, and by the time I reached matric, I knew

that there was no other thing I could possibly study at university,’ she says.

But when she graduated four years later with a degree in fine art and English, Carrol

came face to face with an unpleasant reality: to make a living as an artist, especially as

a sculptor, was not going to be easy. So she did the sensible thing and opted instead

for a life in education. For the next decade or so, she knuckled down to teaching English

to high school students and art to juniors.

She was a fine teacher, but Carrol still kept her creative core very much alive – and

the desire to see if she could make a living as an artist refused to go away. Thus it was

that towards the end of the 1980s, with political change in the air, she decided to

undergo a transformation of her own. ‘Throwing caution to the wind’ at the age of

thirty-five, she quit her safe teaching post and succumbed to her childhood dream of

being a full-time artist. She gave herself six months to succeed.

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‘I had saved up a bit of money and paid off all my debts. I had enough to last for

about six months,’ she says. ‘It was a make-or-break situation.’

With this deadline hanging over her head, Carrol set up in the basement of her

house, designed a range of copper candlesticks and went into production. She had no

business plan (not having any business training, she didn’t know that such a thing

was necessary), which is not to say that she hadn’t thought through what she wanted

to do. The idea behind the candlesticks was simple. Carrol reckoned that in order to

make a living out of art, she had to produce something that was also functional. It had

to be something that was part of everyday life and that people could also enjoy.

‘It is difficult for someone to justify spending money on pieces of art that are

purely decorative,’ she says. ‘Specially if you are working with sculpture – because

they are larger, more awkward, they require more space to display. Sculpture is quite

a tough sell! I really wanted to pursue my passion, but I knew that I would not be able

to do it selling pure fine art.’

At this point, Carrol made a few other key policy choices that have underpinned

and helped strengthen the brand throughout its twenty-year history. The first was to

only ever use the best materials available so that the products would always be in the

luxury market (the kind of item you keep as an heirloom rather than a trendy fashion

piece you discard after a season – hence their appeal as wedding gifts). The second

was to create items that were not only beautiful and functional, but also a little bit

playful and irreverent.

‘I wanted to make something that people would smile at, at the dinner table,’ she says.

‘I wanted to move right away from the traditional (and serious) cutlery and dinner

settings and create something different, something fun. I also liked the idea of eating

being a sensual experience, so my pieces have a sensual element as well.’

The candlesticks sold well, and after a year or two Carrol became bored with them.

Looking to expand her range, she dabbled a bit in jewellery, using silver as her medium,

but was eventually drawn back to the world of larger items – the sculptor in her, she

speculates. In 1989 she experimented by using pewter to make a spoon with the now-

famous trademark nude figure handle.

‘I wanted to use pewter (which is a 95 per cent tin and 5 per cent antimony and

copper mix) because I liked the silver colour and it is a relatively easy metal to work

with,’ she says, adding that she was also delighted at the challenge of doing something

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new with this medium. Up until then it had only really been used to make the stolid,

traditional beer mug.

The rest hardly needs telling. Nothing like it had been seen in South Africa before

and the products were an overnight sensation. Carrol thinks that the suddenness of

her success was helped along by the fact that her launch coincided with the beginning

of the interior decor boom in South Africa, and that her products were displayed in

Peter Visser – an avant-garde shop in Cape Town that was synonymous with all things

cool and happening. Their endorsement ensured that people were soon lining up for

Carrol’s designs.

‘People really enjoyed the product,’ she says. ‘And it is really motivational if some-

one is prepared to haul out hard cash for your products – it gets the juices flowing.’

With this kind of motivation, there was no stopping Carrol. From then on the

business grew exponentially, doubling in size every year. ‘It kept outstripping even my

most ambitious forecast,’ says Carrol.

Growth, of course, brought the usual challenges – most immediately, the threat of

burn-out. Up until that point Carrol had been doing literally everything herself, but

there came a time when there were simply not enough hours in the day (and night) for

her to continue in this way. She had to take on her first employees to spread the load.

‘It was seven days a week, morning to night. But you have to be prepared to do

that,’ says Carrol, adding that she is grateful to her partner, Barbara, who was willing

to support her through this.

The business also rapidly outgrew first the cellar and then two successive properties

that Carrol bought to accommodate it. She reached a point where she had to make

some hard decisions. Should she trust that things would continue to go as well as they

had in the first few years and invest in a really large property to accommodate the

business – or should she play it safe?

‘There is always that insecurity of not knowing,’ says Carrol. ‘It is difficult to judge,

and I was having something of a crisis of confidence.’

The dilemma was unexpectedly solved by her father, who runs a citrus farm in

Limpopo Province. He suggested that she do neither, and instead relocate production

to Limpopo, where he had a huge empty building that she could use. A secondary

motive for such a move was that the factory had the potential to create a few jobs for

the many unemployed people in the region. It made sense, and Carrol agreed readily.

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Fortunately, her brother, who had just finished university, was available to step in to

help her set things up and give her some much-needed moral and technical support.

It was a significant moment in the business. The factory opened its doors with a

staff of twelve. ‘I thought it was absolutely extraordinary,’ says Carrol, little knowing

that it was just the beginning.

The marriage between Carrol Boyes and Limpopo Province turned out to be an

excellent one. For one thing, the designs, which are largely inspired by African themes,

were given a new twist. As every product is individually handcrafted, the factory staff

– most of whom come from a culture where wood sculpture features prominently –

put a little bit of their character and soul into the work, and the result is a richer finished

product.

Business continued briskly, and the twelve people in the factory multiplied. Soon

they had outgrown her father’s building and Carrol had to build another, even bigger

one. To cut a long story short, the factory is still in Limpopo and employs about 400

people (in addition to the 100 working in the offices in the Bo-Kaap in Cape Town).

Limpopo has become an integral part of the Carrol Boyes story, helping to give the

brand a strongly authentic South African flavour.

Meantime, Carrol has become something of a South African icon; in 2004 she won

the prestigious Top Women-owned Business Award.

The Carrol Boyes’ range today consists of more than just salad servers and candle-

sticks. Carrol also manufactures tableware, kitchenware, accessories for the bathroom,

desk and office, and furniture. All are made in metal (pewter, aluminium and stainless

steel being the metals of choice), in combination with wood and leather. Although

her market is still predominantly South African, the company also has a healthy

export arm.

Recorded on paper it sounds easy, but, of course, it was not. One of the challenges

that Carrol highlights when thinking back is finance. When she started out, although

she had saved a bit of money – enough to pay her debts – Carrol was not exactly rolling

in it. The nature of the craft, however, meant that she needed money up front to buy

materials so that she could make something to sell. She approached the banks early on

for a loan and was told, ‘Sure – as long as your father signs surety for you.’ But this was

something she could not bring herself to ask.

‘There was no way I was going to ask my father to stand surety,’ she says. ‘I was

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thirty-five years old, I had been working for eleven years. I decided instead to do it on

my own.’

Doing it on her own meant using her personal money to venture ahead, gaining a

little and then reinvesting that in the business to fund expansion. She speculates that

this may have slowed down the growth of the business, but maintains that it was also

a useful discipline, teaching her to be careful with her money and not to go too far

into debt. As a result, growth has been ‘steady but comfortable’.

Another difficulty was that, having chosen to make metals and manufacturing her

life, Carrol found that she was very much a woman in a man’s world. As a result, there

were many barriers. Too often she would find people trying to put her off with one

excuse or another as to why they couldn’t help her. For example, when she tried to

persuade manufacturers to scale up the technology used in the jewellery industry so

that it could be applied to making her larger implements, she was told countless times

that it couldn’t be done. So, to get what she wanted, she had to really keep applying

the pressure.

‘Of course, there were all sorts of practical problems and pitfalls, but I was con-

vinced it could be done,’ says Carrol. ‘But I was dismissed a million times over. I can’t

tell you how many times, in the early months of trying to set up these new processes,

people would say, “No, it can’t be done.”

‘You have to be prepared not to take no for an answer. You have to be resilient and

tough to get through this kind of thing.’

Then, of course, there are the day-to-day stresses and strains of running a business,

including the worry about being responsible for the growing number of people she

was employing. And it doesn’t get any easier with time, Carrol reports.

‘I still wake up sometimes at four in the morning with some weight sitting on my

chest and worry that I won’t be able to pay my staff,’ she says.

Twenty years down the line, Carrol is also still working extremely hard, largely

because she likes to be hands-on. ‘It’s one of the things I like about business. There is

so much that I need to know about, from welding to interest rates and labour rela-

tions. It keeps you on your toes and I enjoy that,’ she says.

In addition to the day-to-day stuff, she is still the creative force behind the business,

as well as being responsible for strategy and direction.

‘I have no balance in my life,’ she jokes. ‘I always get into trouble for working

too hard.’

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Her only concession to balance is to make sure that she spends time in her studio,

which looks out over the Atlantic Ocean, over the weekends, where she can stoke her

creativity.

‘It may not sound like balance to everybody, but it works for me,’ she says. ‘And

when I don’t do it, I feel it. My soul feels empty and I don’t feel grounded.’

So, what’s next? From the outside it looks as if Carrol has pretty much achieved it

all, but there is some unfinished business. For Carrol, the next major challenge is how

to make the business sustainable and able to outlive her.

‘My vision is to take it into the next generation,’ she says. ‘I believe that there’s lots

of talent in this country, and I owe it to my staff and customers to find it so that the

company has longevity.’

Developing and nurturing new design talent has therefore become one of the key

activities of the company. It runs competitions that nurture new talent through design,

and Carrol is involved in teaching skills to all those around her. In this way, she hopes

to guide a select team of new designers to continue the success of the company into

the future.

South Africans can heave a collective sigh of relief. It looks like those wedding

registers will be secure long into the future.

Carrol’s ToP TiPs foR suCCEss

Definitely do it. It’s worth the roller-coaster ride. Being a businessperson is very 1.

exciting; I am glad that I chose this route and didn’t end up just being an artist.

Try to find something new or different to do if you are going to start a business. 2.

Being the first person to do something is a huge advantage. I was lucky in that

I got to the market first with the kind of products I produce. Being first in the

market has had a huge impact on our business. If you can’t do something new,

then you have to do the old very, very well.

Be prepared to work hard. There are no short cuts – you have to work long hours 3.

and put a lot of energy into your business if you want it to grow and flourish.

To support you while you are working these long hours, make sure that you have 4.

a good network in place and that your partner (if you have one) is supportive.

You also need someone to share the wonderful highs with you and to talk you

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through the not-so-wonderful lows. I think it must be difficult to start a business

on your own without anyone to share it with you.

Never take no for an answer. It doesn’t matter who you are or what walls have 5.

been built up to prevent you from achieving your dream; if you are going to be

a success, you have to learn never to accept no.

Use your common sense. When you start out, you have to learn all sorts of 6.

things about business that you might not have known beforehand – for example

contracts of employment and overdrafts, and how they work. It can seem over-

whelming, but if you are practical about it and use your common sense, you’ll

find that you will acquire the knowledge you need as you go along.

Try to find some balance in your life that works for you. I work too hard, but I 7.

do make time for my creative side. The weekends are mine and I spend hours

in my studio. Others might not consider this to be balance, but for me it works

and, when I don’t do it, I feel it. It feeds my soul and makes me feel grounded.

Believe in yourself. 8.

Get good people around you to support you in your business. Always hire people 9.

who are better than you; make sure you get the best. People can make or break

a business – hiring can be a hit-and-miss experience and you only really get

better at it as you go along. A good way to check on a person’s ability is not just

to interview her but to give her a practical project to work on to prove herself

and indicate the skills she has.

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4 Gloria Serobe,FoundinG member oF WiPHoLd and Ceo oF WiPCaPitaL

A champion of economic freedom for women

When the lists are drawn up of black South African women who have played a significant

role in empowering and inspiring women in this country, Gloria Tomatoe Serobe is usu-

ally somewhere in the top five. Co-founder of South Africa’s first and most successful

women’s investment company – WIPHOLD (Women Investment Portfolio Holdings

Ltd) – Gloria might only be a little over five foot tall, but she commands a reputation

that dwarfs that of many other businesswomen.

It’s a reputation that has been fuelled by a thirty-year career in financial services that

has been as illustrious as they come. On the eve of her fiftieth birthday (something she

intends to celebrate for all she is worth), Gloria can look back with a certain amount of

satisfaction. In her working life so far she has seen action on two continents with some

of the heavyweight multinationals, been the financial director of a top parastatal, and

launched and sustained a women’s investment company that’s making real progress

in ushering ordinary South African women into the mainstream economy. Of all her

achievements, this last one is probably the one of which she is most proud.

Gloria is, quite simply, driven by a passion to empower her fellow women, or, more

precisely, to give women economic freedom in a world she perceives is still very much

dominated by men.

‘It is still difficult for women to get the same opportunities in business as men,’ says

Gloria. ‘That is what often discourages women from entering business. Our role is to

make the world accept that women are taking their rightful place in business. All we

want is to compete on an equal footing.’

These are the sentiments that brought Gloria and three like-minded women –

Wendy Luhabe, Louisa Mojela and Nomhle Canca – together in 1993, on the eve of the

country’s transition into democracy, when opportunity for previously disadvantaged

people was knocking.

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Each an executive in her own right, the four were determined to heed the knock

and open the door to opportunity. They did not want to see men waltz away with all the

opportunities. They put their heads together and decided that, with their collective

experience, they could launch an investment company that could take advantage of

the new economic climate. Together they raised R500 000 in seed capital (in invest-

ment terms a laughably small amount) and set about the seemingly daunting task

of launching such a company. But, from the beginning, they were thinking of more

than just opportunity for themselves. They wanted it to be an investment company

that brought wealth not only to the four founders, but also to the vast number of

South African women – black and white – who were then still excluded from the

mainstream economy.

‘We all had the one dream of creating a critical mass of women in business, as

opposed to each one doing her own thing. We knew that if we succeeded we would

be rich, but we thought it would be so much nicer if we were also surrounded by

other rich women,’ says Gloria.

For this reason they decided to do an initial public offer/private placement to women

only. After two years of laying the groundwork, which included touring the country

to mobilise and galvanise potential women investors and building up a decent portfolio

of business into which they could buy, their dream became a reality. In 1997 the

fund was launched with an Initial Public Offer to women throughout South Africa of

R25 million. The response, says Gloria, was mind-boggling. Eighteen thousand women

took up the invitation to become part of the dream and bought shares. Some of them

were individuals, others were groups of women drawn from all nine provinces in the

country, urban and rural. WIPHOLD had arrived on the South African financial scene

with a bang.

‘Effectively, from day one we were a public company,’ says Gloria. ‘WIPHOLD was

the first BEE company to establish a permanent broad-based shareholding – long

before the BEE rules shifted in that direction.’

This early and intuitive understanding of the need for broad-based empowerment

may have had something to do with the fact that each of the four founders had a very

personal experience of what it meant. Gloria, for example, knows first-hand what it is

to rise above your circumstances. From a conventionally disempowered background

– she was one of nine children born in Langa township in Cape Town – she was

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fortunate to be given the opportunities in life to go far; opportunities that she grabbed

with both hands.

‘I have always treated all opportunities as if they would not be around tomorrow,’

she says simply.

The first of these was the chance to learn from her parents. Both superb role models

to a bright young girl, Gloria’s parents were entrepreneurs and ran shops in the com-

munity. From them she learnt much about the perseverance and hard work needed

to make a success of life. Then her grandfather, whom she always cites as the most

important formative influence in her life, gave her something equally important and

utterly priceless: self-belief.

‘Like any grandfather, mine doted on his grandchildren,’ says Gloria. ‘He always

celebrated our successes and downplayed our failures. He made me feel important

and that I could do anything I wanted.’

Showing promise from an early age, Gloria was given the opportunity to be the

first girl to study at St John’s School for Boys in the Eastern Cape (one of the few good

schools for black children at the time). Of course, she jumped at it. From there she

went on to earn her BComm from the University of Transkei and then won a Fulbright

Scholarship that took her to Rutgers University in New Jersey, where she attained an

MBA. After her formal education, Gloria became an accountant for Exxon and worked

in the USA for a few years before returning to South Africa, where she worked in the

accounting sphere (for Munich Reinsurance and Premier Group). Then, at age thirty-

two, she took a sudden leap from accounting into the world of investment and merchant

banking, accepting a role with Standard Corporate & Merchant Bank (SCMB). There

she learnt all about corporate and project finance, and mergers and acquisitions. The

move was also significant, because at SCMB she met one of her future business

partners – Louisa Mojela.

By the time she reached WIPHOLD, Gloria was therefore already a seasoned and

much-respected businesswoman. So much so that around the time she participated

in setting up WIPHOLD, she was offered (and obviously had to accept, as it was

another one of those opportunities she couldn’t let pass) the post of financial dir-

ector of Transnet. It was to be one of the most challenging, but also very rewarding,

legs of her career.

While working at Transnet, she continued to be involved in WIPHOLD, helping

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it with its rights offer to women (R76 million) in 1998 and private placements worth

R424 million in 1999, as well as assisting with listing the business on the stock exchange

that same year. However, by 2001 it became clear that WIPHOLD needed more than

her peripheral involvement.

After its listing, WIPHOLD ran into trouble. A natural downswing in markets

from 1999 on, coupled with the lack of full-time involvement by its founders, meant

that the company was suddenly in danger of going where all the other post-apartheid

women-owned investment firms had gone – down the tubes. But Gloria and her co-

founders were not about to let that happen.

‘The burden of being a pioneer is that you can’t afford to fail,’ she says. ‘You find you

have attracted a following and become an inspiration and a role model. You become

anxious to succeed, not only for your own sake, but also for your followers.’

Thus, Gloria resigned from Transnet and joined WIPHOLD full time in 2001, in

a bid to get the organisation back on track. She believes that it is necessary for the

founders to stay at the helm, sharp and committed, so that they can continue to hold

the organisation to its original vision. Today, three of the four original founders still

work in the business.

‘If WIPHOLD fails, it won’t be because the founders are not there,’ she says.

As part of the turnaround strategy, one of the first things they did was to estab-

lish Wipcapital as a wholly owned financial services subsidiary of WIPHOLD, which

allowed them to adopt a more operational focus. Gloria became its CEO.

Then, in 2003, WIPHOLD bought out its minority shareholders and delisted as a

R1.5 billion company, a move that Gloria says was all about taking back control.

‘We felt that with listing, we could no longer control who bought shares, and our

ideology of being a women-owned company was being eroded,’ she says. ‘Now just over

60 per cent of the company is again owned by women, which is the way we like it.’

After that, there was no looking back. In 2005 WIPHOLD grabbed headlines when

it secured stakes in the local- and London-listed insurance giant Old Mutual – as well

as in subsidiaries Nedbank and Mutual & Federal. A deal worth R7.2 billion, it was

one of the biggest BEE deals in the country at the time, and also the first sizeable trans-

action to be driven equally by women. In the same year, WIPHOLD also concluded a

significant BEE deal worth R396 million with Distell and acquired a 1.12 per cent

stake in Telkom. Most recently, WIPHOLD and Sasol Mining announced a transaction

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(valued at almost R1.9 billion) that has seen thousands of rural and peri-urban

women participating in a BEE transaction for the first time. WIPHOLD, through a

new entity called WIPCoal Investments, became the BEE partner to Sasol Mining.

Now almost fifteen years old, WIPHOLD represents over 300 000 women investors,

and over 50 per cent of the stock owners are black. Although it has been bigger, it

employs a stable workforce of sixty.

Gloria says that one of the secrets of their success has been the fact that they are

an operational company and not just a portfolio-holding company. ‘For the deals we

do, we don’t have outside advisors. We have got our own very powerful investment-

banking team in-house,’ she says.

She adds that being able to demonstrate that they are self-standing and have the

technical expertise and capacity for the deal is important for their credibility, par-

ticularly as BEE deals are often subject to criticism.

‘We need to be able to demonstrate that we are not just a bunch of lucky people

hanging around to collect our dividend without doing any work. Here we work for

our money. It’s an obsession for us. We want to be indispensable in business, and the

only way to do that is to be knowledgeable and to work hard at it.’

It’s an obsession that has paid off. The impressive turnaround, led by Gloria and

co-founder Louisa Mojela (the CEO of WIPHOLD), that brought the company back

from the brink to become one of the top-performing investment companies in South

Africa, has earned the two of them numerous accolades. Leading South African weekly

business journal, the Financial Mail, named Gloria among the country’s twenty most

influential women in 2004, and in 2006 she and Louisa were finalists in the Ernst &

Young World Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. Gloria was also crowned the Business-

women’s Association Businesswoman of the Year in 2006, and she sits on numerous

boards, including that of the JSE and the UCT Graduate School of Business.

It all sounds like a lot of hard work, but Gloria is definitely not all work and no

play. In fact, the ratio seems to be a little the other way around. She believes firmly

that nothing can be achieved without hard work, but that it needs to be balanced with

a fair dollop of fun.

‘Our strategy sessions, for example, are about 30 per cent intense working and 70 per

cent fun,’ she says, adding that to make sure of the fun, they tend to go away somewhere

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special for these annual sessions. In 2008 it took place in Kenya (in time to watch the

annual game migrations), and in 2007 they went to Mauritius.

She also finds time to be a mother (to two boys) and a wife (to husband Gaur

Serobe), relationships she believes in passionately. Despite her fervent championing

of women’s rights, she describes herself as ‘not quite a feminist’, in the sense that she

espouses home values.

‘I think marriage and home life play a vital role. Given the loneliness you experience

in the boardroom, it is nice to know there is something at home for you,’ she says.

This, of course, comes at a cost. ‘There is no such thing as balancing home and career,’

she says. ‘It is not balanceable. You have to have a good support network in place.’

For Gloria, that support comes mainly from her mother-in-law, a woman who

understands the difficulties of being a working woman and who is committed to the

happiness of her sons. The other key to keeping both spheres of life in harmony, says

Gloria, is making sure that there are no surprises for anyone.

‘You must either be in or not in. Your family must know where you are and how

they can find you so that they know how to support you,’ she says.

She must be doing something right, because the stresses and strains don’t appear

to be taking their toll. Gloria seems relaxed and ready for anything. Which is just as well,

because with tough economic times ahead, WIPHOLD is facing a potentially bumpy

ride. But Gloria is happy that they have done all they can to weather the storm.

Firstly, their business is diversified. ‘The whole purpose of WIPHOLD now is to be

strong in a few sectors and trust that they can’t all fall apart at the same time,’ she says.

Secondly, she is confident that they have the best possible team in place. Hard work

and excellence have always been non-negotiables in the company, and this counts for

a lot.

‘Excellence is everything here,’ says Gloria. ‘You are only going to win on the back

of that. There is no substitute for super, super performance. We have a very bright

team in place with enough conservatism to ensure things work.’

It is also a close-knit team, although good people come and go. WIPHOLD does not

have the deep pockets necessary to keep some of their top staff from being poached

by other financial services companies, but there is a loyal core of people working in

the business. Gloria reports that the average service for staff is ten years. With these

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fundamentals in place, she is confident that WIPHOLD will continue on its march

towards equity in South Africa.

‘It has always been part of WIPHOLD’s ethos to make women our business by

finding ways to bring disadvantaged women into the economic mainstream,’ she says,

‘and we think that we are achieving that.’

Indeed, many of the women who bought into WIPHOLD right at the beginning

remain shareholders today and have seen their investment grow exponentially over

the years. Somehow, it seems likely that with Gloria and Louisa at the helm, they won’t

have seen the end of that growth yet. ‘We will never be billionaires because there are

so many of us, but we will never be miserable either!’ she says.

Gloria’s toP tiPS For SuCCeSS

Don’t be afraid to try. 1.

Believe in yourself. Without being arrogant, it is necessary to believe that you 2.

can do it, no matter what. This belief will always have to come from somewhere.

In my case, I always talk about my grandfather, who was so eager for our success

that we grew up thinking we could do anything.

Treat every opportunity as if it won’t be around tomorrow. Every opportunity 3.

I’ve had in my life, I have grabbed with both hands.

Having fun is a big part of business. You cannot carry your sadness into your 4.

workplace and hope to make it. Celebrate every little achievement – there is

nothing wrong with champagne, really! Find the opportunity to pick out the

most positive and best things about your colleagues and celebrate those. It is

also important because the younger people in an organisation will look to you,

the leader, for motivation and will need to see the light-heartedness in you.

Let people know where you stand. Your principles have to be clear at all times. 5.

That’s the only way people get comfortable working with you. You may lose

business as a result of taking a principled stand, but then it was probably not

worth having in the first place.

Acknowledge the people who support and mentor you and hang on to them – 6.

especially the men. I have been mentored by men only all my life. I have never had

the opportunity to be mentored by a woman in my thirty-year working career.

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One of the enablers of my success has always been the fact that the ruling party

in general, and former President Thabo Mbeki in particular, has a strong, well-

articulated policy on women’s empowerment. Mbeki went out of his way during

his presidency to empower women, and I honour that.

Learn how to be tough! It’s not easy out there and you will be on your own.7.

Look out for and encourage other women; without scaring them, you have got 8.

to make them believe that they can do it too.

Open yourself to criticism, as that is how you will learn.9.

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5 ina Paarman, Founder and direCtor oF ina Paarman’S KitCHen and Paarman FoodS

A cook’s taleEven if you don’t buy Ina Paarman products, you can’t help noticing them as you stroll

down the supermarket aisles. They line the shelves at eye level: salad dressings, pasta

sauces, seasonings and more.

As anyone in the food business will tell you, gaining and maintaining such a prime

spot on the retailers’ shelves is no mean feat. There are two ways to get there: either

by forking out large sums of money to pay the retailers to move you up the shelves,

or the hard way, to produce a quality product and build a loyal client base slowly but

surely. The Paarmans started small and had to take the slow route.

What is now a respected multimillion-rand South African brand, with customers

from Cape Town to Dubai, started out as a cooking school in Ina’s garage in Constantia.

Behind the lines of tasty products is a great story featuring plenty of hard work and a

simple philosophy: to make home-made, healthy food accessible to as many people

as possible.

‘Our products are halfway between health food and convenience food,’ says Ina.

‘We don’t use monosodium glutamate (MSG) and additives (a decision taken right at

the start, as her eldest son is allergic to MSG), and are obsessive about quality and

authenticity, but at the same time we make cooking quick and easy.’

Underpinning the entire enterprise is a great family team and an easy love of food

and cooking that infuses everything Ina does. It is a love inspired by her grandmother.

‘I grew up on a farm, and my grandmother was the cook in the family,’ says Ina.

‘She had a wonderful vegetable garden. Nothing was fancy but everything was so real,

so fresh and tasty. She taught me the art of eating well and of smelling and tasting

things – which is what my life today is still all about.’

It was these early experiences in the kitchen and garden that led Ina to study

home economics when she left school. Then, after graduation, she lived and worked

in London for two years, an experience that gave her a wider view of the food world.

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‘During my travels I had the opportunity to taste and learn about new ingredients

and other cultures and cuisines,’ says Ina. ‘This was a wonderful growth experience,

and after tasting fresh produce in France, I realised that while there was a lot that was

really good there, there was also a lot that South Africa had to offer on the taste front.’

Like her grandmother, Anna Swart, the French and Italian home cooks also showed

respect for good ingredients, and for assembling these with care, love and attention,

convincing Ina once and for all that this was the only way to go.

On her return home, enthused with all this new knowledge, she started a teaching

career in Home Economics, eventually ending up as a senior lecturer at the Cape

Technikon. There she taught students, and adults on evening courses. For Ina, her inter-

action with the home cooks (male and female), in particular, was an eye-opener.

‘All of a sudden I was dealing with students who didn’t just want to get through

the syllabus and pass an exam, but who wanted to put fabulous food on the table in

the shortest possible time. It gave me a completely different perspective,’ she says.

The enthusiasm of her class of home cooks and the recent switchover to metricated

measurements, which left everyone feeling a bit unsure, got Ina thinking about starting

up something on her own. After seven years at the Technikon, she was getting restless.

‘Something seems to change every seven years in my life,’ she says. In this case, it was

deciding to abandon her regular income in favour of trying something on her own.

‘With my grandmother’s appreciation of things that come from the earth, with

the opportunities I had to travel and taste ingredients around the world, and then the

experience I gained from teaching adults and children, I felt that I had a good grounding

to go into business and start my own demonstration kitchen,’ she says.

She was encouraged in this by both her husband and her mother, herself an entre-

preneur (she started her own veterinary retail business at the age of fifty-six). She told

Ina that she was too smart to work for the government, anyway, and gave her R4 000.

Ina used the money to convert the garage at their home, and in early 1982 she opened

the doors to Ina Paarman’s Kitchen.

The school started slowly – at first there were just six pupils – and Ina says it was

harder than she had expected. ‘It was a hell of a shock,’ she says. ‘Suddenly it was just

me and my domestic worker in the garage – and I had no administrative back-up, no

colleagues to brainstorm with.’

However, she comes from solid, independent stock and was not so easily cowed.

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She persevered, and before long was handed her first big break when she was offered a

regular TV slot on Good Morning South Africa. From there, word of her lessons spread

and her classes were soon oversubscribed. In those days, with not many food pro-

grammes on television, Ina was the closest thing there was to a celebrity chef. As a

result, the society and parliamentarian wives were lining up to get new ideas for their

dinner parties and family entertaining.

Quite quickly Ina hired another two people to help with the cleaning and washing-

up. Then came the realisation that, during quiet times, like the school holidays when

she wanted to spend time with her two boys, she would have to find something for

her staff to do. Accordingly, she set them to work to make a seasoned sea salt using an

old recipe of her grandmother’s. It was her first independent product.

More publicity for the cooking school was forthcoming when Ina was approached

by Jane Raphaely around this time to be the food editor of the newly launched Femina

magazine. She was also writing a monthly cooking column for Die Burger newspaper,

and the experience of writing for these two divergent markets taught her about being

sensitive to one’s audience. To this day, she is acutely aware of the need to listen to her

customers and to understand what they want; she continues the communication via

her website and a monthly newsletter, which has a large following. Ina still takes the time

to respond personally to many of the thousands of e-mails that come her way as a result

of this, and also still regularly contributes to Fresh Living magazine. Her experience

as a columnist played an invaluable part in building up the emerging Ina Paarman

brand, too.

‘Suddenly a brand name developed,’ says Ina. ‘People knew the name and that the

recipes worked and were reliable. There is a real art to writing recipes that are actually

doable,’ she adds. Ina believes she acquired this skill through teaching. There is nothing

like instructing the same class six times in a row to get you to hone the way you do

things and, crucially, the way you tell others to do them. ‘You have to weigh up every

word and describe every action clearly so that whoever follows the recipe will have a

great dining experience,’ she says.

Ina cemented the brand’s success when she decided to write her first cookbook

after being encouraged by her students to capture some of her knowledge in a form

that would benefit an audience wider than the forty people who could be squeezed

into her garage.

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After months of deliberation and work, the manuscript, illustrated by none less

than Stanley Pinker (a South African artist and friend of Ina’s), was ready. She took it

to all the publishers in Cape Town, only to find that none were as enthusiastic about

the project as her students had been. In short, they all refused to publish, telling her

that she was crazy to think anyone would want to buy a book with only line drawings

to illustrate it and hundreds of tips in the margins.

‘I came home very dejected,’ she says.

Down but not out, Ina was not to be put off so lightly. Her son Graham urged the

family to self-publish, and, following much deliberation, they did just that.

‘After much soul-searching, we borrowed the money from our bond,’ says Ina. ‘It

was honestly a huge risk. We had the book printed, and for four months nobody slept;

then suddenly all the books were sold!’ The book – Cook with Ina Paarman – was a

hit and is still in publication today.

Ina maintains that the business is built on the back of this cookbook, and in many

ways she’s right. In 1990, after eight years of running the cooking school and with

political change in the air, the business took another step forward. Recognising that

growth was essentially curbed by the number of hours that Ina could spend teaching,

Graham suggested a completely new strategy: to go into large-scale production to man-

ufacture and sell a more serious line of products. To finance such an expansion, they

used the money the family had made from the book, and Ted, Ina’s husband, ad-

vanced some of his savings to make up the shortfall.

Graham, who had decided to abandon a budding career in accounting, joined the

company as managing director, and went out and found a small factory in Diep River.

Paarman Foods was suddenly a reality. Ted, a seasoned business administrator, also

came on board, making it truly a family business.

If Ina thought opening a cooking school was challenging, opening a production

facility was a whole new ballgame. With premises to rent and salaries to pay, the daily

stresses of running a business increased dramatically.

‘That first winter we moved in was very stressful,’ admits Ina. ‘I never get sick, but

I had four courses of antibiotics that winter. I can honestly say that the first few years

were extremely difficult. Cash flow was a constant problem. We basically had to do

everything ourselves. We employed just a few unskilled workers to help us, as we

couldn’t afford anyone of a higher calibre.’

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Graham ran the factory while Ina got on with the business of running the cookery

school, writing for Femina and Die Burger, and developing new products to be made

in the new factory. Before long, they managed to get a foot in the door of the export

market and the major retail outlets within the country, and they began their slow but

sure climb up the shelves.

But in 1994, with the dawn of the new South Africa, Paarman Foods ran into deep

waters. With the opening up of international markets post-1994, the company received

huge export orders that they found hard to resist. Soon they were shipping significant

volumes offshore, to the UK in particular. It seemed too good to be true, and it was.

After a bad summer in the UK, Ina’s range of summer products didn’t sell well enough,

and significant volumes were unceremoniously shipped back to Cape Town.

‘It was the pits,’ says Ina. ‘It hit us hard and we had to fight to keep things together.’

Faced with a double-whammy of lost sales and products now past their sell-by date,

everybody advised them to sell the business, but Graham was reluctant to do so.

‘He said that we had a good business; that we had hit a bad patch but couldn’t

throw in the towel at the first hurdle; that we had worked too hard for this,’ says Ina.

In the end the family agreed with him, but the months that followed were difficult, as

they had to consolidate the business all over again.

‘I have no illusions; Graham’s financial sophistication and sheer guts were invaluable

at this point,’ says Ina. ‘He battened down the hatches and turned every cent over ten

times. If we needed a thousand bottles, he would buy only a thousand bottles. He

watched our cash flow like a hawk. We called in our creditors and slowly, slowly things

began to improve.’

One of the cornerstones upon which they rebuilt the business has been technology.

‘We have always believed that creativity and technology make all the difference,’

says Ina. ‘As a result, we are constantly innovating and have invested in state-of-the-

art equipment in our factory that contributes directly to our success, mainly because

it means we can be flexible and produce new products faster and better than the

competition.’

Their technology includes hi-tech emulsifying equipment, which enables them

to produce creamy-tasting salad dressings lower in fat, as well as sophisticated roasting

equip ment (to get that real home-made taste) and pasteurising equipment, which allows

them to maintain freshness and optimum nutritional value without sacrificing taste.

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Today, Paarman Foods is as healthy an enterprise as the food it sells. Fifty per cent

of the business still primarily comprises its own branded products, including the books

and videos that carry on the tradition of the cooking school. A very healthy 25 per cent

is in local food service, where they supply restaurants with customised products; 20 per

cent of the business comprises house brand labels and a growing 5 per cent export

component has crept back in, although Ina says they are approaching exports cautiously,

not wanting to get burnt twice.

‘It’s the jam on the bread now, not the bread,’ she says.

The company employs upwards of 120 people, from the chartered accountant to

the factory floor, and Ina sees all of them as a kind of extended family.

‘We have some good people working at Paarman Foods,’ she says. ‘I think what

tends to happen in family businesses is that people do have a sense of belonging.’

In addition to the employment they generate directly, Paarman Foods also provides

a livelihood to numerous disadvantaged groups around the Cape Peninsula, to which

they outsource various activities, such as labelling. It is not something they boast

about or use to sell extra products (which makes it all the more admirable); it’s about

doing the right thing and giving something back. Ina says she believes that focusing

on these softer angles is a unique contribution that women can bring to business.

Looking back, Ina says she feels that they can be proud. ‘We often forget to stop

and celebrate,’ she says, ‘but it feels good; a lot of good has come out of our business,

I think.’

On a personal level, one of these good things has been her current home in

Constantia, which they bought a few years back – a magnificent five-and-a-half-acre

plot with airy, modern offices in one corner and a beautiful 1930s home in another,

and with a herb garden, a lavender garden and some seriously big old trees in between.

Ina says it’s the one indulgence they have allowed themselves in more than twenty

years of building the business.

Standing in her gorgeous garden, this tiny, tough home economics teacher turned

businesswoman says that her journey has taught her one fundamental thing: how

important it is to be passionate about what you do.

‘If you chase the money, it won’t come, but if you do the right thing and do some-

thing you love, it happens. You have to breathe life into a business like you have to

breathe life into a garden – or a child. You cannot do that without love,’ she says.

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Ina’s toP tiPS For SuCCeSS

You need to start with the skills that you have already honed. In my case, I was 1.

a home economics senior lecturer, so I had in-depth technical knowledge and a

thorough background in teaching – I knew what I was doing and starting a cooking

school was a well-calculated risk.

In the food business, one product is never enough; you have to have something 2.

more to offer. For this it helps to be technically well versed. Our advantage is

that we can make a wide variety of products because we have the technical

expertise to develop new products.

Don’t choose partners who are like you – choose partners with very different 3.

and complementary skills so that you need each other and have to get on.

You need to understand finance and have fiscal discipline, especially since a 4.

growing business is a monster that devours money. It is so true what Aaron

Searll said: ‘If you run out of money, you run out of business.’

Develop your ability to build relationships. In our case, we have built relationships 5.

with our customers, suppliers, retailers and with the press.

Find ways to get publicity – there is no better way of doing this than via the 6.

press and TV. I can’t thank Jane Raphaely enough for the opportunity she gave

me for many years as the food editor of Femina. It really did play a large role in

helping us build the brand. I still have a media presence and contribute regularly

to Fresh Living magazine; I now also use my website and DVDs to build relation-

ships with customers.

Avoid trying to be better than others. Rather just focus on doing what you are 7.

doing and doing it well. Don’t try to impress anyone else, just yourself.

Never forget the person who buys your product or service. At the end of the day, 8.

these people are the ones you need to court.

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Jane raphaely, Founder oF Jane raPHaeLy and aSSoCiateS, CHairman oF aSSoCiated maGazineS and editor in CHieF oF O, The Oprah Magazine in SoutH aFriCa

The queen of magazinesWhen Nasionale Pers (now Media24) appointed Jane Raphaely to start and edit Fair

Lady in 1965, the Financial Mail ran a scathing editorial, predicting that it would be

a publishing flop because they had appointed a pregnant uitlander with no editing

experience. Jane has proved them spectacularly wrong. Not only did Fair Lady, under

her editorship, reign supreme in the market for nineteen years, but she also went on to

found a publishing business that has brought some of South Africa’s best-loved (and

commercially successful) reads to the market – including O, The Oprah Magazine,

House and Leisure, Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan.

‘I still like to read the Financial Mail,’ says Jane wryly. She is only being half-facetious;

part of her success is that she is no fool, and has always made it her business to keep

abreast of current affairs and gather market intelligence. As the chairman of Associated

Magazines, the largest privately owned publishing house in South Africa, which, for

twenty-four years, has set the standard for magazine publishing in the country, she

has no choice.

Originally from the UK, Jane came to South Africa in 1960 armed with a BSc in

sociology and economics from the London School of Economics and looking for new

challenges. She was firmly placed on the magazine trajectory a few years after she arrived

in Cape Town when a column she had written in the Cape Times caught the attention

of Alba Bouwer, the features editor of Sarie magazine. This woman, who was later to

become the wife of Hubert Coetzee, the MD of Nasionale Pers, commissioned Jane to

write two articles on South African food and fashion – such as it was in those days –

which went on to cause quite a stir and earned her a fair bit of notoriety among the

Afrikaans readers of Sarie.

When, a few years later, Nasionale Pers came under pressure to launch an English

title to complement the very successful Sarie, Alba Bouwer put forward Jane’s name

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as a politically neutral but strong candidate for the editorship. The MD, remembering

the contentious articles, was intrigued enough to meet her. Jane, in the meantime, had

been working in the PR and advertising world, where she had built quite a reputation

for her talent and shrewd business sense, and it was this reputation that in the end

clinched the deal. The job was hers.

‘I was very, very startled to be offered the job, but not so startled that I didn’t say

yes,’ she says. ‘It was a fairy-tale situation. I leapt at the chance, because I had always

loved reading magazines and there were no good ones in English in South Africa. The

one very promising one, called Madame, which had been started by Hetty van Breda,

had been stifled at birth by the CNA to protect Femina, in which they had an interest.

I had a very strong feeling, as a feminist and a humanist, that women’s magazines

could play a role in shaping events for women if they were edited properly.’

And over the next nineteen years, editing the magazine properly is exactly what

she did. While also raising a family – her second daughter, Vanessa, was born in the

same week that the first issue of Fair Lady came out, and her third daughter, Julia, was

born a year later, when the magazine went from being a monthly to a fortnightly pub-

lication – Jane turned Fair Lady into the premier women’s magazine in South Africa,

setting the tone for all that came after it. Forty-three years later, the magazine is still

going strong (now as Fairlady).

True to her ideals of shaping events for women, during her time at Fair Lady Jane

also contributed to the growth of working women in South Africa. ‘When I started

out in the 1960s, career women were very unusual,’ says Jane, ‘but after nineteen years

we had managed to create quite a few of them!’

So much so that, in the early 1980s, Jane could see an ‘enormous gap’ opening up

in the market for another woman’s title that would target a different, more career-

orientated woman with personal spending power. In her capacity as editor of Fair Lady,

she had already been approached by Hearst, one of the largest international publishing

companies in the USA, with an offer to publish Cosmopolitan under licence in South

Africa. She knew that this would be the perfect title to plug that gap. Thus, she set

about convincing her employer to take up Hearst’s offer – but they were not to be

persuaded.

‘I knew that if Nasionale Pers did nothing about it, some other publisher would,’

Jane says. As it turns out, she became that other publisher. After trying in vain to get

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Nasionale Pers to see the light, and unable to resist the temptation of publishing a

magazine like Cosmopolitan, she resigned and secured the licence to publish it on her

own. Her next move was to persuade Nasionale Pers to come aboard as partners in

the venture while retaining control of the company herself.

In 1983, Jane, her husband Michael and Volker Kühnel, the über advertising sales-

man, formed Jane Raphaely and Associates and became the official publishers of

Cosmopolitan magazine. After almost two decades of being an editor, Jane suddenly

found herself as a publisher with a lot to learn.

As shrewd as ever, the first thing she made sure of was that they had an excellent

lawyer on hand to help negotiate the complexities of the licensing and partnership

agreements. To finance the venture, Jane and Michael obtained an overdraft from the

bank, and Kühnel remortgaged his house. That took care of 50 per cent of the required

funds. The other 50 per cent was supplied by Nasionale Pers, who had agreed to come

in on the deal as the printer and distributor.

‘It was the best deal they ever made,’ comments Jane. ‘They have done nothing but

make money from it with no effort at all on their part!’

With everything in place and all the contracts signed and sealed, Jane and her

team set about the heady task of producing their first issue. Jane was both editor and

publisher – not something she would recommend, she says, as it comes at a tremendous

cost. ‘You have to have high energy levels and be capable of doing at least two things

at the same time,’ she says. But in those early days, they were not really in a position to

be too choosy and had to put the entire publication together on a skeleton staff as it

was. They did so, first out of the boardroom at Nasionale Pers and later from premises

in the Golden Acre in Cape Town. It was, says Jane, an exhilarating few months.

The magazine hit the shelves for the first time in 1984, and was an instant commer-

cial and critical success, the famous quote of the day being that ‘women were stabbing

each other with their stilettos to get at the copies on the shelves’.

As Jane had predicted, the market was ready and waiting for Cosmo, and sales did

not cannibalise Fair Lady’s market. In fact, Jane had gone out of her way to ensure that

her first ‘child’ would not suffer with the advent of the new publication, even giving

Nasionale Pers an undertaking not to take her staff with her (although most of them

wanted to follow her), so that they could carry on the style and brand of the magazine

without her.

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‘I knew that Fair Lady would withstand competition from a magazine so clearly

aimed at another segment of the market,’ she said.

With two successful titles under her belt, Jane was now irretrievably the queen of

women’s magazines in South Africa, and there was more to come. A few years after

Cosmopolitan arrived in a blaze of glory, Jane was approached by Republican, the

publishers of Femina magazine, to relaunch that magazine, as it was languishing in the

collective shadow of Cosmo and Fair Lady. Initially, they entered into a partnership,

but a disagreement over how much to invest in the magazine led to a parting of the

ways. ‘You can’t make great magazines without spending the right amount of money,’

says Jane. ‘And so, since we were prepared to spend the money and Republican were

not, they eventually sold Femina to us.’

In establishing a new company – Associated Magazines – to house the new magazine,

Jane once again set about doing what she does best: building a great magazine. However,

with Femina, the task proved harder than anything she had done to date.

‘The worst thing you can possibly do is to take over a magazine with a bad image

and try to relaunch it,’ she says. ‘It’s so much easier to start from scratch.’

After much hard work, the new-look Femina made its debut, and it, too, was a

commercial and critical success. From there it was a short hop, skip and a jump to the

other publications that Associated Magazines took on. House and Leisure was created

in 1993, followed by Brides and Homes (1998) and Baby and Me in 2000 (which later

folded after lack of advertising support). O, The Oprah Magazine was licensed in

2002 and, finally, Marie Claire in 2003.

The launch of each title has, for Jane, been a major highlight ‘because they are all

different and each one represents a different challenge’. Each came into being only

after careful research and market intelligence revealed a potential gap in the market,

and each is infused with Jane’s passion for magazines and what they can achieve in

transforming society. For Jane, the magazines always come first.

‘I went into business because I wanted to make magazines, not money,’ she says. ‘I

care deeply about magazines and the quality of magazines, and the mission they have

in society to help that society grow and develop.’

It is this belief in what a magazine can achieve that may have helped clinch the

deal to publish O magazine in South Africa, which is perhaps Jane’s best-known

achievement. South Africa remains the only country in the world other than the USA

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that is licensed to publish the magazine, which Associated Magazines does jointly

with Hearst and Harpo. From the moment she heard that Hearst was to publish O in

the USA, Jane was determined to secure the licence for South Africa.

‘I chased and chased them,’ she says. ‘I contacted Hearst before the first issue even

appeared in the USA, and they promised to give us the opportunity to pitch if and

when they decided to license it for publication elsewhere in the world.’

When that opportunity came up a couple of years later, Jane made absolutely sure

that they didn’t waste it. They did their homework well. For example, knowing of

Oprah’s love of nougat, the presentation was sweetened with a block of South African

nougat. And knowing her fondness for the colour turquoise, the glossy mock-up that

they produced of the South African O was wrapped in turquoise tissue paper. But

Jane thinks that what caught Oprah’s attention was when Jane told her that if she let

her magazine come to South Africa, it might not make as much money as it would in

other markets, but it would make a difference. ‘I didn’t put a pitch for South Africa as

a needy country, but as a worthy country,’ explains Jane.

In the end, Oprah made her decision after seeing African women in a television

programme struggling to find good reading in a hair salon.

Her pitch to Oprah perfectly sums up why Jane has been a success in the incredibly

gruelling, competitive and cut-throat publishing industry, where margins are tight

and production costs high. Firstly, it simply shows that she has guts. She’s not afraid

to venture into the unknown if she thinks it is the right thing or if she wants it badly

enough.

‘I know that if you want to do something but you are frightened to do it because

you think you might fail, it’s not a good enough reason not to do it. Because, at the

end of the day, it’s infinitely better to live with the knowledge that you tried and failed

than that you failed to try,’ Jane once said in an interview.

Secondly, she is not afraid of hard work and is smart enough to do the necessary

background work to pave the way for success.

‘Magazines are very hard work,’ says Jane. ‘Don’t be fooled by the glamour that is

visible from the outside. Magazine editors are normally never satisfied and the read-

ers are very discriminating, too, and they don’t let you get away with a thing. The

product has to be perfect, otherwise it’s not satisfying.’

Thirdly, the products she turns out are only of the highest standard and quality

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– even the mock-up they did for the pitch to Oprah was flawless. Hand-in-hand with

this is a commitment to good writing and editorial content. It’s no coincidence that

Associated Magazines has produced more than twenty of the top editors currently

working in South Africa, because time is spent on selecting the right people and

training them properly.

‘The intellectual and professional value that we have in the company does not only

come from us,’ says Jane. ‘We have been very fortunate in our association with other

great publishers, like Hearst and National Magazines, UK. We run a kind of graduate

school,’ she jokes. ‘The most effective training that happens in this business is when

someone comes in fairly low down and steadily works their way through the ranks.

Really, there is nothing better. The people you learn from are the people you sit next to.

I do a lot of mentoring, but, really, working with someone is the best mentoring, as you

are dealing with action and reaction all the time, and that is what really teaches you.’

People are, of course, a vital part of the sustained success of any company, and no

more so than at Associated Magazines, which employs approximately 140 people – a

large proportion of which are women. Jane believes that, as publishers of high-end

women’s magazines, it is important to have staff who share an ‘intimate knowledge of

the way women have grown and what they are interested in. Maybe it takes women

publishers to do what we do, as we are the only ones who realise how women have

developed and become such a totally diverse and varied market,’ she finishes.

Among the many high-calibre women working at Associated Magazines are two

of Jane’s daughters. Vanessa, who was trained by Linda Kelsey and Marcelle d’Argy

Smith at National Magazines in London, is now the editorial director of Associated,

while Julia is the managing director of the company. Jane never imagined such a suc-

cession plan.

‘To my surprise, two of the girls came into the business,’ she says. ‘When they were

little, I used to pray that they wouldn’t go into the theatre or get anorexia, but it never

occurred to me to pray that they wouldn’t go into magazines – because I thought that

they had seen first-hand how tough it is and what an ultra-competitive field it is.

I thought that they would have been frightened off long ago!’

Although well past retirement age (she was born in 1937), Jane herself shows no

signs of being frightened off. She still very obviously adores what she does and continues

to fuel the industry with her passion and enthusiasm, most recently launching the

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Jane Raphaely Award for Editor of the Year at the 2006 Magazine Publishers’ Association

of South Africa Awards.

In her extraordinary career, Jane has been crowned Businesswoman of the Year

(1986), Media Innovator of the Year (1986) and Star Woman of our Time (1986), and

in 2002 she won the Sasol Women in Media Award. She has established the Shelter for

Battered Women in Langa, was instrumental in the making of the ‘Real Men Don’t

Rape’ campaign, the Men’s March and Women Demand Dignity, but when all is said

and done, what most people know of her and will remember her for is that she is the

woman who almost single-handedly gave South Africa a woman’s magazine industry

of which to be proud.

Jane’s toP tiPS For SuCCeSS

You need to spot a gap in the market before you launch your product – and 1.

know the market intimately. This means being prepared to go and work in one

industry, putting in the time for long enough to see how it affects the product

or the field in which you are working. The easiest way to learn about what’s in-

volved in producing anything is to work in the industry; do your detective work

and learn from the people around you. And along the way, learn to be grateful

for the lows because, basically, you only really learn from the lows.

Networking is essential. Know where the talent is. You need to know where the 2.

possible partners and the possible clients are.

Marketing skills are essential. It’s no good just producing the right product at 3.

the right price if you don’t also know how to sell it.

It’s not enough to know what people are doing. You need to know WHY they are 4.

doing it – that’s why economics and psychology are useful subjects. You have to

understand what makes people tick. You can achieve that in three ways: read

about it, listen to people and follow the money. If you want to know what makes

people tick, look at what they spend their money on; that information is always

available.

Have a clear vision of what you want, and then have the determination to make 5.

sure that it happens. I had a wonderful lawyer, Arnold Galombik, who used to

have a saying that forced you to concentrate: ‘What is your first prize?’ It’s a

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very good discipline to apply, regardless of whether you have a lawyer asking

you the question or not, as it makes you stop and think, what do you really

want? Then go for it and don’t settle for anything less.

Get yourself a good lawyer – it is essential in the magazine business!6.

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Jenna Clifford,Co-Founder and direCtor oF Jenna CLiFFord (Pty) Ltd

Dreaming bigEvery woman who starts her own business must somewhere harbour the hope that

she ends up like Jenna Clifford. Director of her own successful jewellery business,

with fabulous offices in Sandton lavishly furnished right down to the monogrammed

towels in the bathroom, Jenna has awards stacked up against her name and she was

voted the most beautiful and most inspirational woman of South Africa by Rapport

newspaper in 1997. She is the very epitome of a successful woman who has made it

in business.

Sitting at her opulent desk showcasing an enormous bowl of red roses, she makes

it look easy, but the glamour belies the hard work and the very real suffering that has

gone into building up the Jenna Clifford brand.

‘Through pain comes gain,’ Jenna is fond of saying, and in her life there has been

plenty of past pain. She has not wasted any of it, taking every opportunity to learn

and grow. First up was her upbringing. The only child of a working-class family, Jenna

grew up in Bez Valley and Kensington with a driven and hard-working father who

was always telling her, ‘Unless you are the best, you are a nothing.’ It was not exactly a

nurturing environment; in fact, Jenna would go so far as to say it was, emotionally,

downright painful.

As a result, she was an introverted and lonely child who didn’t do well at school

and lived in her own world, pouring much energy into art (her grandparents supplied

her with the materials) and swimming (which she did at provincial level). Although

at the time she resented her father for his relentless attempts to toughen her up to

face what he perceived to be the difficulties of life, she says in retrospect that right

there, staring her in the face, was one of her first life lessons.

‘As I’ve got older, I’ve seen the value of the pain of my childhood,’ she says. ‘My

father gave me the vision to want to be the best – or at least to be on the upper part of

the field. He was a great role model in that respect.’

7

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After matric, her father wanted her to go straight to university, but she wanted

some time out and became a swimming coach instead. Getting her feet wet as an

entrepreneur, she ran her own little swimming school and then, at the tender age of

nineteen, fell somewhat imprudently into the arms of her first husband. Life rapidly

took a turn for the worse when her new husband’s jewellery business went spectacularly

bust. He had set up shop subcontracting the manufacturing of gold racing pendants

for the racing fraternity without, as Jenna points out, a business plan or knowing a thing

about the business. Jenna was dragged into the fracas and was left to deal with the debts

he had run up, or face losing their house. To repay the jeweller who had loaned her

husband money, she ended up working for him.

It was another grim and hard chapter in her life. But, with her usual streak of

optimism, Jenna was able to take away something positive.

‘The pain moved me into my purpose,’ she says, meaning of course the jewellery

business that she was destined to conquer. Jenna was given the priceless opportunity

to learn the trade the hard way, which is also, she says, the best way. From making tea to

managing the factory floor, she learnt every aspect of the business, from the creative

to the commercial, in the most hands-on way.

‘I was adaptable because I was greedy to learn. I didn’t mind doing things like

making tea because I knew it served a greater purpose.’

Such rigorous training is something she maintains is vital for anyone who wants

to go into or start a business. ‘If you go into a business from the bottom up, you are

more secure than if you enter midway and don’t get the grounding,’ she says. ‘Nowadays,

everyone wants to skip the first bit, but that’s wrong, wrong, wrong. If you don’t get

the grid, you’re dead.’

Which might explain a little why Jenna’s business today is very much alive and

kicking. Hers is most definitely not just a tale of raw talent made good. Her talent –

exuberant as it is – is solidly grounded on terra firma.

After three years on the factory floor, her hard work earned the respect of her boss,

and he made her a junior partner in a new jewellery design company. Although it

never prospered, largely because of a difference of opinion – he wanted to go into mass

production, she believed in individual design, customisation and soul – the experience

was invaluable to Jenna. They went their separate ways, with Jenna pocketing a few

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more lessons from her time there. She continued to run a small jewellery design concern

on her own after the split.

‘From the burn, you learn. We had a few wins, but we also made mistakes,’ she says

sanguinely. ‘It is only through the failures that I stuck with it and learnt.’

Just twenty-three years old at the time, with one business behind her, Jenna’s life

once again ran into suffering when her first child, a daughter, died at birth because of

doctor error. The unimaginable anguish plunged her into a whole new realm of pain

– but also growth. The trauma, though, caused her first marriage to break down.

Emerging fragile but more spiritually attuned, four years later Jenna married again,

to the man who gave her the name Clifford. But after just three years things soured, and

the marriage ended when her husband ran off with his secretary, leaving her alone

with her second daughter – then just a baby.

After the split, her second husband turned nasty and threw Jenna out of the house,

requesting her to revert to her maiden name. Something in Jenna rose up against

such treatment; she told him that, far from changing her name, she was going to ‘put

it up in lights’. At the time she had no idea how, but she knew that big things lay ahead

for her.

‘This was my open sesame to do my own thing,’ she says. Her own thing, as it turned

out, was Jenna Clifford (Pty) Ltd, which she launched in 1992 with ‘that good-looking

creature Dex Kotzer’, her perfect partner both romantically and in business. Having

met Dex two years earlier, she realised that they were a perfect left-and-right-brain

match. Kotzer, an LLB graduate, had already successfully run and franchised Juicy Lucy,

so he had all the business know-how, while Jenna had the industry savvy and, of course,

the talent.

‘But one person’s talent is never sufficient,’ says Jenna. ‘You need a dichotomy of

talent to create the bird with the balance.’ With Dex she had found that perfect balance.

And, seventeen years later, with two more children and a thriving business, it seems

she was absolutely right. It hasn’t always been easy – vigorous debate forms a big part

of their business relationship, with Jenna’s more feminine and spiritual energy clashing

with his practical and legal side. She says that, far from destroying their relationship,

however, such debate has helped to strengthen the business.

One area where Jenna has dominated, though, is branding. From the start, it was clear

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that Jenna’s philosophies (about life, design and jewellery) and her unique exuberance

and generosity of spirit would be what characterised the business.

Ever since her early days in jewellery design – selling tickey bracelets to the girls at

her school – Jenna has always believed in the mystery and magic of creating something

unique. She did not want Jenna Clifford (Pty) Ltd to be about soulless mass production,

but went instead for the personal touch – selling signature jewellery in a highly indi-

vidual and exclusive environment. This ethos still pervades the business today. She has

a string of highly trained consultants who interact with clients in each of her four

boutiques in Gauteng. ‘Originality cannot be mass-produced,’ she says simply.

But convincing buyers back in 1992 that this was a good route to go was no easy

task. Jenna says that they were forced to think outside of the proverbial box in order to

build a sustainable customer base because they did not have pots of cash sitting about

to bankroll the endeavour. Apart from their own savings, they used only money from

their bond to finance the new business. In a high capital expenditure business like

jewellery design and manufacturing, there are enormous costs (metals and labour, for

starters) and concomitant risks. This meant that they had to go slowly and feed the

business organically.

‘Any fool with a lot of money can advertise, but we didn’t have a lot of money. We

had to do it without money,’ she says.

To spread the word, Jenna resorted instead to the personal touch again. She got on

the phone and started telling people that she had a superior product to offer at a better

price.

‘I didn’t go around selling,’ she says. ‘I talked about passion, and slowly people

who had past experience would try us again, and when they were happy, we would get

referrals.’

It was hard work – all hours, six days a week. Jenna didn’t even take time off for

the birth of her third daughter.

‘You need passion to succeed as an entrepreneur,’ she says. ‘If you think of working

five days a week from eight to five in a new company, it will definitely fail. That much

I know to be true!’

And thus did the business grow, little by little and by word of mouth. ‘One of our

mottos is “Keep walking”,’ says Jenna. ‘Every day you have to be out there.’

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This still holds true for Jenna today. Ever the brand ambassador, whether she is

giving a corporate workshop on designer jewellery or dropping her seven-year-old

youngest daughter off at school, she is never shy to promote her brand.

‘If someone in the shoppers’ checkout queue asks me where I got my lovely ring,

I tell them all about Jenna Clifford and why it is such a special brand,’ she says. ‘Word of

mouth is what I believe entrepreneurship is all about. I think our business has grown

through passion, good old-fashioned hard work and commitment – as well as manu-

facturing the right products with the right hands.’

The right products in Jenna’s case comprise a truly breathtaking range of rings,

pendants, bracelets and earrings, as well as trophies and gifts. Jenna is proud of the

fact that a large proportion of what they produce is hand-designed and -finished, and

that they trade only in fine-cut diamonds and other top-quality gemstones – her

personal favourite being the pink sapphire (because it is a spiritual colour and is ruled

by Venus, the planet of love).

‘The brand constantly strives towards perfection,’ says Jenna. That perfection lies,

according to her, in understanding the stones, which are more than just a pretty geo-

logical phenomenon. She is fascinated by their symbolism and properties, and how

they fit together on a vibrational level.

‘Gems have electromagnetic properties. My job is to make sure everything vibrates

properly, to make them with intent,’ she says. ‘Art is deliberate, it has intent and its

power comes from the hidden imagery and symbolism within it. Great design is perfect

in its execution and brilliant in the hidden messages it reveals.’

Over and above that, she is concerned about how they fit with the person who buys

them. ‘An investment in jewellery is an expression of beauty, completing a person’s

lifestyle and personality. You wear your jewellery and your jewellery epitomises you,’

she says.

It’s this philosophy that has kept customers coming back for more – Jenna Clifford

is now the jewellery of choice for many of South Africa’s best-dressed women. Her

designs are also sported by international superstars, including Celine Dion, and she

has designed some of South Africa’s most high-profile trophies, including those for the

Tri-Nations rugby tests in South Africa from 2000 to 2003 and the solid Greengold

African elephant statues for the ‘Three Tenors’ concert in 1999.

Jenna Clifford is now the name behind four innovative and dynamic brands:

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Jenna Clifford Fine Jewellery, Renaissance by Jenna Clifford, Jenna Clifford Home-

ware and Jenna Clifford Trophies. In addition to diamond-encrusted goodies, Jenna

Clifford (Pty) Ltd also has an insurance affiliate, Asset Care, that is specially designed

for its highly individualised client base.

‘We had to do that,’ says Jenna. ‘When your Merc gets stolen, it is easy to replace.

But if your Jenna Clifford ring is nicked, it’s not possible to simply do a copy job to

replace it. They might not use the right cut and grade of stones, for example. This

results in dissatisfied clients and, ultimately, lost intellectual property in our business.

We therefore offer clients our own insurance product that guarantees that they will

get back exactly what they had before. It has a lower premium and runs under our

insurance.’

This insurance product is a classic example of innovation, something that Jenna

believes is critically important in any business, but more so in an industry underpinned

by the creative process.

Fortunately, after almost twenty-nine years in the trade, she shows no signs of

running out of ideas. ‘I’m as whacky as a Mad Hatter,’ she says. ‘You need to keep inno-

vating, make sure you know the old way through and through, then kick it up a notch.’

For her inspiration, Jenna has always turned to nature and books. She likes nothing

better than to retire to her home in White River, where she can recharge and be inspired,

surrounded by nature. ‘My soul has to survive on good organic fauna and flora. I can’t

design well in a city,’ she says. This love of nature may also explain why a brand as

glamorous as Jenna’s is symbolised by the simple rose. For Jenna, the rose captures

something about love, beauty and the contradictory nature of life: thorns and beauty

in one package. The rose has personal significance for her, too. ‘My grandparents had

a rose garden with 150 rose bushes, and whenever I went to stay with them, my grand-

mother would put roses next to my bed. She would meticulously cut off all the thorns

so that they would not accidentally prick me. From early on they symbolised for me

the dichotomy of life.’

A few years ago, Ronald de Leeuw of De Leeuw Roses helped cement Jenna’s

personal connection to the rose when he named a rose (a vibrant, cerise-pink one, of

course) in her honour. De Leeuw approached Jenna with the idea because he was

drawn to the rose-decorated wrought-iron gates leading into her Menlyn boutique.

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These gates are just one of the examples of roses – real and artistic – that proliferate

in her office, home and jewellery designs. Jenna says that as the business has become

more successful, she’s enjoyed splashing out on, in particular, enormous bowls of

fresh roses under which many of the tables now groan on a daily basis.

‘Through the years of struggle we were not always able to afford roses,’ she says.

‘We were always saving money. Now that I can afford roses, I like to do it in a big way.’

This abundance is in many ways the perfect summation of Jenna herself. After the

years of pain and many setbacks there is not a trace of bitterness in Jenna Clifford.

She oozes goodwill and joie de vivre.

‘Only love sets you free. I have always believed in no reprisals,’ she says simply.

‘I always try to go in love and it has always served me. I strive to give more than I take

and in that way I go clean. I sleep at night – a very important thing.’

And it is not just to her clients, staff and family that she gives. Jenna is also a

generous philanthropist. This is epitomised in her launch of the Dream Big collection,

consisting of jewellery and homeware (with swimming legend Ryk Neethling as the

brand champion), in 2007. Dream Big seeks to create awareness and enthusiasm among

all South Africans to participate in dreaming big; a percentage of the profits are donated

to the Tomorrow Trust, which focuses on educating orphans and vulnerable children

affected by HIV/AIDS, and the Walter Sisulu Cardiac Unit.

‘Our motive is to inspire individual talent and a vision of dreaming big and creating

a successful South Africa for all,’ says Jenna.

Her own life and actions prove it. If you have intent and will, and are prepared to

work hard and be determined and passionate, you can achieve your goal. In Jenna’s

case, she has become the undisputed leader in jewellery design in South Africa, but her

challenge is everyone’s challenge. What can you become?

Jenna’s toP tiPS For SuCCeSS

Learn about business before you go into it – and not just about the sector in 1.

which you are adept. It’s a rough game. Don’t underestimate the difficulty of

starting a business; the pitfalls are many, for example compliance or finance

issues. Everything can seem overwhelming and difficult, and if you don’t watch

out, these are the things that can sink a business before it even gets going.

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Subscribe to 2. harvard Business review so that you can learn from the mistakes

of others. Study your industry and know what the trends are.

Dream big, yes, but make sure you take the time to capture this vision on paper 3.

via a business plan. Then get mentors to shoot your business plan to bits!

Keep cost structures low for at least the first three years of business; that might 4.

mean having to work from home.

Attention to detail is critical. Whatever you sell or produce has to be of a high 5.

quality.

Be passionate about what you do – whatever you do in business, you have to be 6.

passionate.

Always be yourself. When you start compromising your value system, you com-7.

promise everything.

Celebrate success. My father gave me a valuable lesson in life when he told me, 8.

‘Follow the Jews’. What’s special about Jewish culture is that they are highly

educated and they celebrate, emulate and clone success. Too often, others

despise success; there is no room for that – always give more than you take.

Get the human element right. Finding and training the right people is a key factor 9.

in business success. You need to have an intensive interview process to select

people not only with the right skills, but also with the right values that fit with

your business. Do a proper background scroll-check of people, and, if possible,

have a three- to four-month ‘bed test’ before making them full-time employees.

Documents

Co-foundER And Co-ownER of TswEloPElE PRoduCTions And …zebra.bookslive.co.za/files/2009/03/my-success-extract.pdf · Co-foundER And Co-ownER of TswEloPElE PRoduCTions And HEAd of